Kokkola,
Finland

In the end of July 2018 a joint venture consisting of Wasa Dredging and Van Oord Marine Contractors signed two separate contracts regarding a big project in Kokkola Harbour and Fairway. The project consisted of a diversity of different elements including UXO masses (which are masses with risk of containing wartime explosives), contaminated masses, drilling and blasting of underwater rock, dredging of hard and soft masses, building of new bunds as a foundation for quay walls, construction of erosion protection in the harbour and installation of navigation marks. The project also included various environmental monitoring and control schemes such as installation of silt curtains and weirboxes. Wasa Dredging used specialized equipment for the challenging masses of the project, such as specially designed clam-shell environmental bucket for the polluted masses aswell as military grade armour protection of the equipment while dredging UXO masses.

Wasa Dredging was leading the joint venture in this project while Van Oord provided their extensive expertise in hopper-dredging works.

In total during the project 2,9 million m3 where dredged. This includes 380 000 m3 of UXO masses, 640 000 m3 of contaminated masses and 100 000 m3 of bedrock. In the works dredgers Optimus, Harald, Hector and Boulder were deployed. Masses were deposited into several land reclamation sites depending on the type of material. The rock masses were used to construct 1,8 km bunds around the reclamation sites to hold the material and to become new land areas for the Kokkola harbour. The project was finalized in autumn 2020.

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